The Dance of Connection: How to Talk to Someone When You're Mad, Hurt, Scared, Frustrated, Insulted, Betrayed, or Desperate PDF
Preview The Dance of Connection: How to Talk to Someone When You're Mad, Hurt, Scared, Frustrated, Insulted, Betrayed, or Desperate
T Dance of HE Connection How to Talk to Someone When You’re Mad, Hurt, Scared, Frustrated, Insulted, Betrayed, or Desperate Harriet Lerner, Ph.D. To my best friends Contents PROLOGUE: Back to the Sandbox ix CHAPTER 1 Finding Your Voice 1 CHAPTER 2 Voice Lessons from My Father 12 CHAPTER 3 Our First Family: Where We Learned (Not) to Speak 24 CHAPTER 4 Should You Share Vulnerability? 37 CHAPTER 5 In Praise of Pretending 51 CHAPTER 6 Putting Our Parents in the Hot Seat 70 CHAPTER 7 Love Can Make You Stupid 88 CHAPTER 8 Marriage: Where’s Your Bottom Line? 107 CHAPTER 9 “I Can’t Live with This!” Voicing the Ultimate in Marriage 120 CHAPTER 10 Warming Things Up 136 CHAPTER 11 Silent Men/Angry Women 157 CHAPTER 12 Criticism Is Hard to Take 169 CHAPTER 13 An Apology? Don’t Hold Your Breath 183 CHAPTER 14 Complaining and Negativity: When You Can’t Listen Another Minute 201 CHAPTER 15 The Sounds of Silence: Finding a Voice When You’re Rejected and Cut Off 215 EPILOGUE: To Thine Own Self Be True 233 NOTES INDEX AUTHOR’S NOTE ON PROFESSIONAL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ABOUT THE AUTHOR OTHER BOOKS BY HARRIET LERNER PRAISE CREDITS COVER COPYRIGHT ABOUT THE PUBLISHER PROLOGUE Back to the Sandbox I recently heard a story. Two little kids are playing together in a sandbox in the park with their pails and shovels. Suddenly a huge fight breaks out, and one of them runs away, screaming, “I hate you! I hate you!” In no time at all they’re back in the sandbox, playing together as if nothing has happened. Two adults observe the interaction from a nearby bench. “Did you see that?” one comments in admiration. “How do children do that? They were enemies five minutes ago.” “It’s simple,” the other replies. “They choose happiness over righteousness.” Grown-ups rarely make such a choice. We have a terrible time stepping aside from our anger, bitterness, and hurt. We know that life is short, but damn it, we’re not getting back in that sandbox until that other person agrees to having started it—and admits to being x / The Dance of Connection wrong. Our need to balance the scales of justice is so strong that we lock ourselves into negativity at the expense of happiness and well-being. A great deal of suffering could be avoided if we could be more like those kids. We could lighten up and let things go. I feel calmed and relieved when my husband knocks at my study door in the middle of a fight, puts his arms around me, and says, “I love you. This is stupid. Let’s just drop it.” Like two kids in the sandbox, we’re suddenly light and playful again. Of course, adult life is not always so simple. Some issues need to be revisited—not dropped—and talk is essential to this process. We need words to begin to heal betrayals, inequalities, and ruptured connections. Our need for language, conversation, and definition goes beyond the wish to put things right. Through words we come to know the other person—and to be known. This knowing is at the heart of our deepest longings for intimacy and connection with others. How relationships unfold with the most important people in our lives depends on courage and clarity in finding voice. This is equally true for our relationship with our self. Even when we are not being heard, we may still need to know the sound of our own voice saying out loud what we really think. Our challenge as adults is to develop a strong voice that is uniquely our own, a voice that reflects our deepest values and convictions. Once we are comfortable within that voice, we can bring it to our most important relationships. We can choose to move to the center of a difficult conversion—or we can let it go. We can speak—or decide not to. Whatever we choose, we can head back to the sandbox with clarity, wisdom, and intention. By doing so, we can strengthen the self and our connections, and have the best chance of achieving happiness during our time with each other. CHAPTER I Finding Your Voice The thread that unites my work both as an author and as a psychotherapist is my desire to help people speak wisely and well, sometimes about the most difficult subjects. This includes asking questions, getting a point across, clarifying desires, beliefs, values, and limits. How such communication goes determines whether we want to come home or stay away at the end of the day. This is no simple matter, as glib terms like communication skills or assertiveness training imply. Assertiveness is considered a good idea—if not a cultural ideal. But despite decades of as- sertiveness training and lots of good advice about communicating with clarity, timing, and tact, we may do our best to speak but still feel unheard. We may find that we cannot affect our husband or wife or partner, that fights go nowhere, that conflict brings only pain rather than an opportunity for two people to learn more about each other. We may have the same dilemma with our mother, sister or uncle, or close friend. 2 / The Dance of Connection The Limits of “Good Communication” We all want to communicate well and make ourselves heard. “He just doesn’t get it” or “She’s so critical” are sentiments I hear daily in my work. When we speak from the heart, we long for an ear to hear us, and we all have experienced that down feeling when we perceive ourselves as written off or misunderstood. I wish I could reassure you that reading this book will guaran- tee that you will finally be heard in your most difficult relation- ships. Or that strengthening your voice will bring you the love and approval of others. Or that following my good advice will give you a deep sense of inner peace. Truth is, nothing you say can ensure that the other person will get it, or respond the way you want. You may never exceed his threshold of deafness. She may never love you, not now or ever. And if you are courageous in initiating, extending, or deepening a difficult conversation, you may feel even more anxious and uncomfortable, at least in the short run. All the assertiveness training and communication skills in the world can’t prevent a relationship from becoming fertile ground for silence and stonewalling, or for anger and frustration, or for just plain hard times. No book or expert can protect us from the range of painful emotions that make us human. We can influence the other person through our words and silence, but we can never control the outcome. That said, what we can learn in the chapters ahead is enorm- ous. We can maximize the chance of being heard and moving relationships forward. We can take a conversation to the next level when the initial foray doesn’t bring the desired result. We can stop nonproductive conversational habits so that an old re- lationship will take a new turn. We can clarify what we feel en- titled to and responsible for—and what we really want to say. Or, alternatively, we can learn to sit more comfortably with our confusion. We can operate from a
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